For customers that purchased a new Mac computer since June 11, the upgrade to Mountain Lion is free from Apple.

Apple brags that Mountain Lion includes over 200 new features -- which are obviously too numerous to list here -- but we'll include just a couple of the highlights:

Full iCloud integration

Game Center, Reminders, and Notes -- all three are staples of iOS, and all three are iCloud-enabled

Messages -- another iOS transplant

Notification Center -- most Mac users got their notifications via Growl, but now Apple is getting into the game with the -- once again -- iOS-esque Notification Center

Dictation

Power Nap -- this feature allows a Mac to still periodically check email and sync iTunes content while in a deep state of sleep. If connected to a power source, the machine will also perform Time Machine backups and download software updates.

Facebook and Twitter -- these two social networks are also baked into the upcoming iOS 6 release

A few sites have posted reviews of Mountain Lion and the consensus is that it's a worthy upgrade to Lion. The Verge's Nilay Patel is overall pleased with the upgrade:

Ultimately, this is pretty easy: you should spend the $20 and upgrade to Mountain Lion, especially if you have a newer Mac. You’ll gain a handful of must-have features, and everything will get faster and smoother. I haven’t really missed Snow Leopard at all since upgrading, which is remarkable considering how much I disliked Lion...

Mountain Lion is the first version of OS X to deeply integrate network services at every level, from storing documents to sharing photos to connecting external displays, and it seems that much lighter for it — as though Apple’s relentless charge into its post-PC era has allowed the OS X team to rethink exactly what a PC is and should be. Mountain Lion isn’t perfect, but it’s a confident, thoughtful step towards the future of desktop computing.

Engadget's Brian Heater acknowledges that Mountain Lion is a bargain upgrade, but also notes that it seems as though OS X is mainly taking a back seat to iOS when it comes to attention/features, and that the operating system is in need of a complete "rethink":

That said, it seems time for Apple to make a bold new pronouncement on the desktop front. The company appears to have most of its resources invested in the mobile side -- and there's no question as to why: the iPhone and iPad have reinvigorated the company, making it a computing player on a scale that no one (save, perhaps, for Jobs himself) could have predicted a decade ago. Still, it might be hard for OS X users not to feel neglected -- many of the latest new features feel a bit like iOS hand-me-downs. When and if Apple rolls out a new operating system this time next year, hopefully we'll be seeing a very different side of Mac OS.

But with a price tag of just $20, Mountain Lion is a no-brainer upgrade for members of the Mac community.

Gatekeeper is more like Windows UAC (User Account Control). By default it only allows apps from Apples store and identified developers. I can see this causing lots of issues with people wondering why they cant install some things now.

Kind of funny really, in those annoying ads Apple used to take the p**s out of Vista for UAC and its security dialogue boxes popping up, and now Apple have gone and done the same sort of thing.

This is also another in a long line of security features that Windows has for years and only now OSX is just implementing it.

This is so typical of an Apple faithful. We've been doing this on our PC's for like, I don't know, a decade now? But in typical Mactard fashion, you'll just wait and wait for something from Apple no matter how long it takes them.

"This is so typical of an Apple faithful. We've been doing this on our PC's for like, I don't know, a decade now? "

Yup, and the Apple narrative is that they invented it... then a year from now the narrative is that others copied it from Apple. the hipocracy of this company and the gullibility of its fans are absolutely amazing.

Dude, that's like saying MP3 players' been out forever, so what's the big deal with iPod?

I get it. You are a Apple Hater.

Just because the similar feature is avail from other platforms doesn't mean the feature is meaningless and old.

It's HOW the feature complements the OS. Get it?

Wow, laptops been around for 20years .... big deal. I know, but it's the DETAILS that count.

Oh, transistors been around for 50years, so what's the big deal with i7 processors? The technology is 50years old!!!!!!!

Move on buddy. You are acting like a 8 year old. Mountain Lion is out and let the reviewers REVIEW it. At the end of the day, there's something called "The Market" that will dictate whether the product is a viable product or not.

The record will speak for itself. Just like Windows ME/Vista is the worse product EVER. The jury is out. If no one buy the upgrade, then it's a dud. GET IT?

quote: Move on buddy. You are acting like a 8 year old. Mountain Lion is out and let the reviewers REVIEW it. At the end of the day, there's something called "The Market" that will dictate whether the product is a viable product or not.

In that case I'm vindicated. Because "the market" hasn't rallied to Apple computers and their OS's since the early 1990's.

The market has spoken - Apple makes way more profit selling computers than Dell or some other cheapo PC maker like Acer. Time to stop being super duper dumb, Reclaimer. Read some financial reports, will ya?

This explains why MS with all its huge market share makes less money than Apple with its much smaller market share. I bet Ballmer is VERY unhappy that his large marketshare can't be translated into similarly large profits.

I love how you guys just have to bring up Apple's profits at every opportunity, even when they aren't relevant. Do you get an erection looking at stock prices or something?

I was making an argument that when it comes to desktop OS's, "the market" isn't choosing OSX, and traditionally never has in large numbers. Market share proves this. How is bringing up profits defeating my point?

Tell me Pirks, financial wizard, how do Apple's profits stack up to Microsoft just on the OS side of things? The entire Mac OS install user base, world wide, was only 58 million users. Let's compare Apples to Oranges here...

quote: I was making an argument that when it comes to desktop OS's, "the market" isn't choosing OSX, and traditionally never has in large numbers. Market share proves this. How is bringing up profits defeating my point?

Well, you can bring the same point about market "not choosing" premium cars like Lexus and BMW because the market share of much cheaper Chevys and Fords is quite larger. Does this point prove anything? I don't think so, since markets were always shaping like a pyramid, i.e. the most profitable and expensive products on top narrow part with low sales and insane profits, while the cheapest junk is the base of the pyramid with huge sales and zero profit.

Hence marketshare doesn't mean match just by itself. I think the profits matter much more. Can you make a profit by selling a billion of devices for 1 cents of profit on each device sold while your competitor sells ONE device that brings him one billion dollars in profit? Yes you can and your marketshare will be billion times your competitor's BUT your profits will be 1% of his. Did I make myself clear on this?

quote: How do Apple's profits stack up to Microsoft just on the OS side of things?

Well, Apple sells computers and gets profit per computer sold. MS sells OS licenses and gets profit from a license sold. Typical Apple computer costs circa $1500-$2000, that's middle price, I'm not including $3-5K laptops and desktops and I don't include cheapo $799 low end Macs. Typical Windows license costs around $150-200. Again average number, excluding extreme cases here. How much profit can you get from a Windows license for $200 versus profit from a $2000 laptop? Looks like with large margins on Apple hardware the Apple's profit from such a laptop will be quite above the profit MS makes from a Windows license. Even if MS license is pure profit (ideal case) then MS gets say $200 profit from a sold license and Apple is making twice that, i.e. they'd get like $400 of profit, if not more, from a typical Apple laptop they sell. So the 60 million current OS X users are the same in bringing profit as 120 million Windows users.

Well well well. The picture now looks not so rosy for MS because the Windows market is now saturated and MS market share in the OS market has peaked like 10 years ago and slowly but steadily declining ever since. Looks like MS has no place to grow now, they has grown fast until they hit their ceiling in 2000, now they just hold onto that decades old desktop PC market and constantly try to break into the new markets, failing all the time. They failed with Zune, Kin, WP7, and even Xbox success may not pay off all the billions they have sunk into it, including billions to deal with RROD, billions wasted on the previous version of Xbox, etc.

So the company like MS that has a HUGE market share among the low paying, low profit customers, is kinda in a precarious position. It has to grow somewhere and conquer new markets, since it has conquered all the old markets it could and is dominating on them already, so nowhere to grow on them now.

The new competition of highly profitable companies like Apple is a serious threat for them 'cause what is your huge market share worth if it doesn't bring you as large profits as your competitor's smaller marketshare? Eventually your domination and huge market share on the older markets will mean nothing when you are just a tiny blip on a radar of a much more rich competitor.

Say, is you company selling old fashioned iron nails worth much when there is a competitor selling uberexpensive and trendy diamond nails that people kill each other for? Even though you keep 95% market share among all the iron nail makers... you still will look in jealousy how that sneaky diamond nail guy made a billion in profit selling just one truckload of those diamond nails while you sold 10 full freight trains of your iron nails which brough you only 10 million in profit.

So next year that diamond nail guy just knocks on your door and tells you that he just purchased your company with his spare change, and you now work for him.

Will you enjoy your HUGE 95% market share on the iron nail market then, Reclaimer, if you were that iron nail maker guy? Or would you maybe start thinking that market share is much less important than profits?

Your comparison of iron to diamond nails is not at all like apple vs ms. Both are very profitable. It's not like ms has all market share and no money. One sells software and the other hardware. Throw in the multi billion dollar enterprise sector that ms lives off and it's even less relevant. I agree though, much of it is beyond you.

"Doesn't matter if you like my analogy or not, my point about market share being less important than profits is still valid."

If your a stockholder or owner yes. But this discussion wasnt about profit.

"Because company with huge profits and 1% market share may eventually buy out the competitor with tiny profits and 99% of market share"

Yes this is true if it were 99 to 1 or even 90 to 10, but MS and Apple are roughly equal, both make billions every year. Thus your analogy is irrelevant to the subject matter. Its not that it isn't true, its just not applicable to THIS conversation.

So if you are a user of something like BlackBerry, and you observe how a smaller but much more profitable competitor like Apple starts go use their profit leverage to slowly but steadily push your beloved BlackBerry out of the market - you'd still care about BlackBerry? Or you'd say screw it, I'm not a shareholder so why would I care?

yep, I'm typical Mactard - LOL!!!! I've been win user since version 3 and switched to Mac at home only after 2 years of running hackintosh alongside win - I realised that all I used to do on win can do on Mac, I'm not a Mactard, I've just grown up and decided not to fuck around with WinTamagochi at home and use my computer for whatever I need to do without worrying about it and tweaking it and so on.

quote: Gatekeeper is more like Windows UAC (User Account Control). By default it only allows apps from Apples store and identified developers. I can see this causing lots of issues with people wondering why they cant install some things now.

Kind of funny really, in those annoying ads Apple used to take the p**s out of Vista for UAC and its security dialogue boxes popping up, and now Apple have gone and done the same sort of thing.

Incorrect, you have it backwards. UAC took after the *nix style of temporary elevation of user rights to admin, which OS X has obviously been doing since its beginning.

Gatekeeper is simply a whitelist of developers and applications that are known to not be or distributing malware. Any developer can get on this whitelist, even without being on the App Store.

This is just a way to verify that an application isn't malware, and obviously if it is then it would be removed. Users have an option to install anything they choose, obviously, in which case they go through the same admin approval process they did before.

It isn't a walled garden, and it isn't like anything Windows is implementing at the moment.